News: Japan plans to propose purchasing US crude oil at the US-Japan summit meeting

A Japanese government official disclosed that the government has initiated coordination and plans to propose the purchase of crude oil produced in Alaska, USA, during the summit meeting between Prime Minister Koizumi and US President Trump.

The Kyodo News Agency of Japan quoted a source as saying that Japan plans to make the above proposal at the bilateral summit meeting on Thursday (March 19th).

Given the tense situation in the Middle East, the Japanese side hopes to diversify its sources of crude oil imports.

Furthermore, the Japanese government is also in coordination and is planning to express its willingness to provide assistance for the US's next-generation missile defense concept "Kagome", aiming to enhance the ability to deal with the hypersonic weapons that China, Russia and North Korea are currently developing.

"Kim Jong" was a grand plan announced by Trump last May, aiming to deploy detection and interception systems in space to protect the US mainland. The details are still unclear, and the total cost is said to be 175 billion US dollars (approximately 223.3 billion Singapore dollars). Japan hopes to use the issues that Trump is concerned about as leverage to strengthen the Japan-US alliance.

According to relevant sources, one of the main contents of the "Kingu" concept is to deal with hypersonic weapons. Since these weapons fly at speeds five times that of the sound barrier in low-altitude orbits, air defense radars may have difficulty in tracking and intercepting them. As Japan and the United States reached a consensus in their summit meeting in August 2023 on jointly developing a new type of interceptor missile to counter hypersonic weapons, it seems that the Japanese side has made a judgment that it can provide assistance for this concept.